Chapter 4. 2-D Animation

Chapter 4. 2-D Animation

I was recently told about a computer-company employee who walked up to the booth of the creator of a very fine piece of 2-D animation software at a computer trade show. In all earnestness, the computer jock asked the software maker: "Your software's 2-D, right? Why would I want two Ds when I can have three Ds?"

There are lots of answers to this question. 2-D animations far outnumber 3-D animations on the Web, as well as on video and film. Animation of the 2-D variety has an 80-year legacy of talented artists and arguably even more talented cartoon characters. 3-D animation, by comparison, has been available to desktop computer users for only about a decade. Cel animated feature films number in the many hundreds; short films and cartoons number in the thousands. To date, there has been only one full-length 3-D feature and only a handful of computer-generated 3-D short films that are worthy of note. Curiously, there are comparatively few good software tools specifically for doing 2-D animation, but there are dozens of 3-D tools.